Lawmakers and regulators in states including Texas, Vermont and New York are pushing new efforts to make health insurers’ consumer communications clearer, though many states already have some requirements on their books. Rhode Island’s health insurance commissioner wants to make insurers write all documents at an eighth-grade level. A California bill would classify insurance plans by their levels of coverage.

Why is this important? The new study from earlier this week on personal bankruptcies makes the point: Over 60% of bankruptcies involve medical bills as a factor, and around 75% of those bankruptcies are people with health coverage. In many cases, their coveraeg has let them down. At a minimum, people expect health coverage to prevent them from going into bankruptcy. If it doesn’t do that, then it doesn’t deserve to be called coverage.